Utah's Strider Uses Agentic AI to Hunt Foreign State Actors

A Utah-based intelligence firm called Strider is carving out a niche at the intersection of AI and national security. The company uses agentic AI combined with public records to help major defense players — including the US Air Force and NATO — identify foreign state actors.

The business model is getting a tailwind from the Trump administration's economic crackdown on Chinese interests in the US, which is generating fresh demand for this kind of intelligence work.

Strider's approach leans on autonomous AI agents that can sift through massive troves of publicly available data to surface threats that human analysts might miss. It's a growing playbook in the defense-intelligence world: let machines do the heavy lifting on data analysis while humans make the calls.

The firm represents a broader trend of private-sector AI companies embedding themselves deeper into government and military operations.